The Drum Design Awards Round Up

10 May 2016

Industry News

The Drum’s fourth annual Design Awards celebrated the best design from UK agencies and showcased their amazing creativity in a variety of projects. Web, App and the whole spectrum of print design was covered.

The big winner of the night was The Typefaces, who bagged the Poster and Typeface award for simply, putting faces in type. The charming idea started by including animal faces inside 26 roman letters. Each letter was partnered with a rhyme to create a delightful book, which was later turned into posters and t-shirts. “We hope that they appeal to the designer in every child, and the child in every designer” said awarded agency The Partners about the project.

Self - Promotion Award

Every designer knows the scale of effort that has to go into self-promotion. Branding yourself can be as important as branding a paying client, as the design agency Aesop knows full well. Their “Christmas Curiosities” campaign was a spectacular effort by Aesop to increase brand awareness and prove the indisputable importance of storytelling in marketing.

The campaign is as follows: Aesop presented a series of objects on eBay, which at a first glance seem worthless pieces of junk. However, with each item comes a story behind it which gave it such extra value that bidding numbers soared. A £3 key was sold at £190, and a £2 scrap of carpet for £155. The value of storytelling showed how much more people were willing to pay to invest in a product with a worthwhile story.

The campaign sold the agency’s branding and design service effortlessly, whilst giving all proceedings to the charity Maggie’s who provide cancer support. A worthy winner of the Self-Promotion award!

Big Brands were Big Winners

Big brands were also given their turn in the spotlight for the Identity Design, Art Direction and Copywriting for Design categories. PG tips got a nod for ridding years of “generic category messaging” for a simple and stripped back return to the iconic brand mark. We love the simplicity of the new designs, which rely purely on the classic logo and brand colours for a recognisable and modern take on the original packaging (and we were relieved to see the beloved PG Tips Monkey wasn’t discarded either!)

High street shoe retailer Clarks introduced these fun posters in their stores that capture the brand’s origins, shoe expertise and according to The Drum, ‘a history of unconventional thinking and innovation’. The copy compliments each picture for a clever arrangement of shoes which proudly promote not only their products but their philosophy too.

Another big brand to win a gong was Argos, who’s ‘Simple Value’ range got the judge’s approval in the Copywriting for Design award. The Simple Value range does exactly what is says on the tin, and agency The Partners wanted to incorporate this into its copy with a fun twist. The no-nonsense copy perfectly represents the product inside; solid quality at great value. Clean, simple and minimalistic design definitely seems to be a recurring theme in this year’s awards!

Runners Up

And what about the commendable efforts of the runners up? Again, minimalistic design threads through the nominations, especially within the ‘Stacks of Money’ project by agency Purpose for the Countess Hospice Charity. According to Purpose, the ambitious posters were curated by Socio Design who asked fifty designers from across the world to design a poster which interpreted the word ‘money’. The posters, which were inspired by the four most traded coins around the world, were printed and auctioned off to raise funds for the charity.

Another contender that narrowly missed an award was the new pub The Unruly Pig, who’s unusual and original brand image won it a nomination for the Illustration category. The hand-drawn illustration of the pig’s head is punctuated with unruly splashes of colour, and two earrings in its ear give the pig a punk look. According to spring, the agency behind this design, a local man almost had a car crash outside the pub once he saw the design hanging outside! This man was so shocked (and impressed), apparently he later became a client of spring!

Turning to the dark side of illustration is Landor’s ‘Dark London’ project, a printed journey through the twisted tales of London’s sordid streets. They asked a group of illustrators to reveal their own stories of the capital’s hidden underworld, and the result is a strangely eerie yet alluring presentation of London at its magnificently dark best.

And that’s a wrap for another year in design from The Drum Awards! We can’t wait to follow the stories of those nominated and awarded for outstanding contributions to the design world.

All images from The Drum

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